According to the American Psychological Association, over two-thirds of Americans feel like we are at the lowest point in this nation’s history.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock lately, you may be feeling like you’re competing for a medal in the Outrage Olympics. The news has been full of reports of terrorism, natural disasters, sexual misconduct and more.
So we wanted to take an opportunity to make sure that if the news has got you stressed out, know that you are not alone. There is a lot of upsetting information in the news. However, it’s important that we do what we can to take care of ourselves.
Starting with…shutting off the news! We’re half-joking. Of course, it makes perfect sense to want to be well-informed. But new studies have shown that watching more than 6 hours of traumatic event coverage on the news can actually cause more PTSD than being at the event. So be thoughtful about your news consumption.
And more importantly, let’s practice radical forgiveness. In Week 1 of our Forgiveness series, we shared a powerful guided visualization, The Power of Forgiveness — get it now if you haven’t already. This week we encourage you to use it on a public figure. (Yes, that can even mean a terrorist or Harvey Weinstein.) Reminder: we don’t forgive someone for their benefit. We do it for ourselves to let go of negative emotions, and free up our energy that we could otherwise use for positive change and action.
Check out Emily talking about all this and more in the video below.
If someone commits an offense, that’s their karma. You holding on to hatred and anger? That’s your karma. And the best and fastest way to uplevel your own emotional intelligence is to practice forgiveness, accept things as they are, and move on to what’s possible.
So, if you haven’t already downloaded The Power of Forgiveness, you can get it here. And even if you have already listened to it, I encourage you to use it again this week to work on forgiveness for a public figure.